DRACONIAN DOUBLE STANDARD ON DRUGS

Drunken driving is a serious national problem. So here's a proposal:
Wine drinkers would not be arrested for DUI unless they have a
blood-alcohol level of .10. But anyone drinking hard liquor would be
considered intoxicated at .02.

I know it sounds nutty, since drunk is drunk, regardless of what you
use to get there. But it's no crazier than the federal law on crack
cocaine. Two decades after the great crack scare provoked a draconian
response, we still treat it as an unparalleled scourge.

Americans who have come of age in the interim might be surprised to
know that the smokable version of cocaine once was the moral
equivalent of al-Qaida. In 1986, Newsweek called it "the most
glamorous, seductive, destructive, dangerous drug on the
supersaturated national black market," and quoted one expert voicing
what soon became conventional wisdom: "Crack is the most addictive
drug known to man right now," producing "almost instantaneous addiction."

One alleged consequence was a proliferation of "crack babies" -
children exposed to this form of cocaine in the womb who suffered
such severe brain damage that, even as adults, they would have
trouble dressing or feeding themselves. Another was an explosion of
violence by users. First Lady Nancy Reagan warned of a drug epidemic
so vast and devastating that "no one is safe from it."

With the public thus spurred into alarm, Congress responded with
stern action. The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act treated crack offenses
with exceptional ferocity. To get five years in prison, a criminal
had to be caught with 500 grams of powder cocaine, weighing 1.1
pounds, about as much as a typical package of ground beef - or 5
grams of crack, weighing as much as a nickel. To get 10 years, you'd
need 5,000 grams of powder (11 pounds) or 50 grams (less than two
ounces) of crack.

This is what is known as the 100:1 crack/powder disparity, and it
implies what was generally believed in 1986: Crack is 100 times more
harmful than ordinary cocaine. But we have since learned that crack
is not much different.

The most addictive substance known to man? After crack appeared, the
number of people using it or any other form of cocaine didn't
skyrocket - it fell. The harm to infants, we discovered, was not only
greatly exaggerated but indistinguishable from the effects of powder
cocaine. The violence turned out to be mostly the result of turf wars
among drug dealers, not the drug itself.

On the basic issue - is crack worse? -- a study in the Journal of the
American Medical Association found that "the physiological and
psychoactive effects of cocaine are similar regardless" of how it's ingested.

That was in 1996. But a decade later, the law still treats crack
users and dealers far more harshly than those caught with Cocaine
Classic. A report by the American Civil Liberties Union found that in
2003, the average federal sentence for crack offenses was more than
10 years - three and a half years more than the typical punishment
for powder crimes.

But the impact has not fallen evenly across the landscape, like a
gentle snow. Instead, it has been felt most among African-Americans,
who are more prone to use crack than, say, Miss USA or the young
George W. Bush. Well-to-do whites tend to prefer snorting cocaine to
smoking it.

The ACLU notes that while blacks make up 15 percent of the nation's
drug users, they constitute 74 percent of those sentenced to prison
on drug charges. Before the 1986 law, "the average federal drug
sentence for African-Americans was 11 percent higher than for whites.
Four years later, the average federal drug sentence for
African-Americans was 49 percent higher."

The U.S. Sentencing Commission, the federal agency charged with
reviewing sentencing policy, has repeatedly urged Congress to reduce
the disparity. But so far nothing has happened.

In the past, Democrats have displayed no particular courage on the
issue. But thanks to the change of control on Capitol Hill, the House
Judiciary Committee is planning to hold hearings on the subject. Even
some conservative Republicans are on board for reform, including
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions.

But change may not come, since there have always been plenty of
diehard drug warriors who will defend the status quo. What are they smoking?